AFLAC Incorporated

Aflac Incorporated second quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to David Young. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome. Thank you for joining us for Aflac Incorporated second quarter 2025 earnings call. This morning, Dan Amos, Chairman, CEO of Aflac Incorporated will provide an overview of our results and operations in Japan and the United States. Then Max Brodin, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO of Aflac Incorporated will provide more detail on our financial results for the quarter. Current capital and liquidity. These topics are also addressed in the materials we posted with our earnings release, financial supplement and quarterly CFO update on our .aflac.com. For Q and A today, we are joined by Virgil Miller, President of Aflac Incorporated and Aflac US. Charles Lake, Chairman and Representative Director, President of Aflac International. Masatoche Kuide, President and Representative Director, Aflac Life Insurance Japan, and Brad Dislin, Global Chief Investment Officer, President of Aflac Global Investments. Before we begin, some statements in this teleconference are forward-looking within the meaning of federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective in nature. Actual results could differ materially from those we discussed today. We encourage you to look at our annual report on Form 10K for some of the various risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned earlier, the earnings release with reconciliations of certain non-US GAAP measures and related earnings materials are available on .aflac.com. I'll now hand the call over to Dan.

Dan? Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. We're glad you joined us. Aflac Incorporated reported net earnings per diluted share of $1.11 and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $1.78 for the second quarter of 2025. We believe that these are solid results for the quarter, leading to a very good first half of the year. Max will expand upon these results in a moment, but before he does, I'd like to comment on our operations. Beginning with Aflac Japan, I am very pleased with Aflac Japan's .2% -over-year sales increase, especially the 53% increase in the cancer insurance sales. These strong sales were driven largely, as expected, by sales of our newest cancer insurance product, MiRiTO. They include the final stage of the launch of Japan Post Insurance and Japan Post in April. We also saw positive overall sales growth across all distribution channels. This positive results also reflects our new marketing and sales structure in Japan that integrates members of the actuarial, IT, and policy service into agile teams focused on bringing a specific product line to the market, like cancer, medical, asset formation, and nursing care. We also continue to introduce the need for the third sector protection to new and younger customers with our innovative first sector product, Sumitaz, which has third sector optional benefits. Overall, I believe we have the right strategy to meet our customers' financial protection needs throughout their different life stages. Our ability to maintain strong premium persistency is a testament to our strategy. Affleck's reputation and our customer recognition of the value of our products. By maintaining this level of persistency and adding new premium through sales, we are partially offsetting the impact of reinsurance and policies reaching paid up status. Maintaining strong persistency will be vital to the future of Affleck Japan. Being where customers want to buy insurance has always been an important element of our growth strategy in Japan. Our broad network of distribution channels, including agencies, alliance partners, banks, continually optimize opportunities to help provide financial protection to Japanese consumers. We will continue to work hard to support each channel as we evolve to meet the customer's changing needs. Turning to Affleck US, we generated 340 million in new sales during the second quarter, which was a 2.7 year over year increase. More importantly, we maintained strong premium persistency of .2% and increased net earned premium of 3.4%. We continue to see momentum within all areas of our group business, especially our group life and disability, as well as our network dental. In addition, we believe our efforts to drive more profitable growth with a stronger underwriting discipline have contributed to our strong premium persistency and net earned premium growth. At the same time, Affleck US has continued its prudent approach to expense management and maintaining a strong pre-tax margin as Max will expand upon in a moment. In both Japan and the United States, I believe the consumers need the products and solutions Affleck offers more than ever. For our policyholders who've become claimants, Affleck is more than an insurance company. We are a partner in health, a supporter of families during their times of need, and a pioneer and leader in the industry. We are leveraging every opportunity to convey our products can help fill the gap during challenging times, providing not just financial assistance, but also compassion and care. At the same time, we continue to generate strong capital and cash flows while maintaining our commitment to prudent liquidity and capital management. We have been very pleased with our investments, which have continued to produce solid net investment income. As an insurance company, our primary responsibility is to fulfill the promises we make to the policyholders while being responsive to the needs of our shareholders. Our solid portfolio supports our promise to the policyholders as does our commitment to maintaining strong capital ratios. We balance this financial strength and tactical capital deployment. I am happy with how management has handled capital deployment and liquidity. In the second quarter, Affleck Incorporated deployed $829 million in capital to repurchase 7.9 million shares of our stock and paid dividends of $312 million. Combined with dividends, that means that we delivered 1.1 billion back to the shareholders in the second quarter of 2025. Additionally, we treasure our track record of 42 consecutive years of dividend growth. At the same time, we have maintained our position among companies with the highest return on capital and the lowest cost of capital in the industry. 2025 marks three important milestones for Affleck. In June, we just celebrated the 30th anniversary of what is now known as the Affleck Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We look forward to celebrating the 70th anniversary of the company's founding in November. And we also are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Affleck Duck this year. Even though these milestones are noteworthy, it's not the number of years that matters most, it's the privilege of benefiting the lives of millions of people. We are reminded that one thing has not changed since the founding in 1955. Families and individuals still seek to protect themselves from financial hardship that not even the best healthcare insurance can cover. Today's complex healthcare environment has produced incredible medical advancements that have come with incredible costs. It's more important than ever for people to have a partner in their time of need. We believe our approach to offering relevant products makes us that partner. We also believe in the underlying strengths of our business and our potential for continued growth in Japan and the United States, two of the largest life insurance markets in the world. On an ongoing basis, we are taking actions to reinforce our leading position and building on our momentum. I'll now turn the program over to Max to cover more details of the financial results. Max.